Consolation Of Philosophy

In Book 2, Boethius complains of the severe misfortune that has landed him in prison. Like Philosophy, Fortune is personified as a woman; in Book 2, Chapter 2, Philosophy interprets Fortune’s words and tells Boethius of the futility of placing his trust in her. Using logical deductions, Philosophy helps him to see that fortune is inherently capricious, and that nothing it brings is of any great value. She describes fortune as operating like a perpetual wheel, changing people's circumstances from happy to sad and vice versa.

One of the main ideas of the Consolation is that all fortune is inherently good since it functions to punish, correct, or encourage. Although we may immediately think of a stroke of ill fortune as bad, it will have a lasting moral effect. This is because fortune is under the control of God's providence, which is ordered to the good of all creatures. With this foundation, Philosophy expounds upon human emotion, positing that emotion has clouded Boethius’s mind. Emotion, Philosophy argues, distracts man from his true path to God.